Halving the Cost of LEDs

By Rex Crum

Bill Watkins, the former CEO of hard-disk drive maker Seagate Technology, wants to shake up the prices of solid-state light-emitting diodes.

Bridgelux and Molex

The Helieon module

Mr. Watkins became CEO of LED maker Bridgelux in January. On Tuesday, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company released a product called Helieon that Mr. Watkins says will cost as low as $20 for a lighting unit that has a lifespan of more than 10 years.

While $20 may seem like a lot for a lightbulb, Mr. Watkins says the price is less than half of the $50 that has been standard for similar LED lighting systems. LED is a lighting technology that runs cleaner and cheaper than traditional lights.

Mr. Watkins also sees the price falling further, and soon. “For consumers, when it gets down to $10 a bulb, we’re really going to see the industry evolve,” he says. “It’s going to be a classic disruptive technology.”

To get to such a low price point for Helieon, Bridgelux partnered with Molex, a developer of interconnection systems for electrical, fiber optic and electronic products. The two companies came up with a “plug-and-play” design for Helieon, meaning the product can be easily be removed and upgraded if necessary. In the past, LED systems have had to be hardwired in so that replacements and upgrades often required the light fixtures to be completely stripped out, resulting in higher costs for customers

Mike Picini, vice president of solid-state lighting at Molex, says the company had looked to get into the LED market for at least a year. But one of the issues with LED lighting had been developing connectors and sockets for the products that the light manufacturers know will still be usable in the future and not require wholesale replacements of lighting systems, he says.

“Part of the difficulty with this has been that it is very complex to take an LED emitter and produce a form factor that won’t change over time,” Mr. Picini says. “The socket is the reason it has taken so long for this technology to go to the mass market.” Molex ultimately developed such a socket to work with the new product, he says.

Mr. Watkins says Bridgelux expects to begin shipping Helieon products in May, with production ramping up over the next quarter. Bridgelux and Molex, which will distribute the new products, didn’t identify any customers for Helieon.

Still, “over the next two years, this is going to be one of the most-exciting clean technologies out there, getting rid of the lead and mercury in other lights,” says Mr. Watkins. “Once you pay to install it, it’s there and it starts to deliver on its promise.”